Haiku Sticky #260

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Happy Haiga Day!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. Photo by keepps.

Poetry Friday--A Sketchbook Project Two-fer

Photos of two children, separated by many miles [please click on them to enlarge for more detail]. Two poems for my Sketchbook Project.

Caption: Young girl working in Anniston Yarn Mills. Location: Anniston, Alabama. Date: November 1910. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

Words

In the mornings I look
at the lettering on the
side of my machine.

I know my letters but I
never did learn to put them
together to make words.

Julia, reads real good.
She reads the waving words:
"American Machine Company
Pawtucket, R. I."

What is a Pawtucket?
It sounds like my brother
saying Pa took something.

Julia says it's a place way
far from here. In capital R,
Rhode, capital I, Island.

I imagine a place sunny,
breezy, smelling of clean
air. A place where girls,
like me, don't have to work.

Maybe, I'll go there, someday.

Caption: (For Child Welfare Exhibit 1912-13.) View in a Pawtucket, R.I., cotton mill showing accumulation of lint on floor. The air is full of it too, but photo doesn't show it. Location: Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Date: November 1912. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hines, courtesy Library of Congress.

Pawtucket Spring

My little sister is five.
She likes to pick the bits
of fluff that cling to me
when I get home from
the mill. She calls me
her favorite dan-dee-lion.

Poems © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

The Round-Up for this week is taking place at Buffy's Blog. Stop by and say "hi!"

Haiku Sticky #259

This one I wrote several weeks ago for the 15 Words challenge at Laura Salas's blog. (I also erroneously posted it and then took it down, so, some of you may have seen it before!)

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Happy Haiga Day!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Poetry Friday--"Sights Set"

Written for the Sketchbook Project:

Caption: A few of the small girls and boys (not the smallest ones) that I found working in the spinning room of one of the Amoskeag Mfg. Co. mills at Manchester, N.H. Photo taken at 1:00 p.m., May 21, 1909, in hallway of spinning room. Many others there and in the other mills. Smallest boy (on left hand) is George Brown, No. 1 Corporation. Corner of Granite and Bedford Sts. Next is, Eugene Lamy, 16 Marion St. Girls: Melvina Proulx, 145 Cartier St. Laura Oclair, 145 Cartier St. Location: Manchester, New Hampshire. Photo taken May 21, 1909 by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

Sights Set

Look at him posing
like some mighty strong-man!
My petite suitor, standing
tall, arms crossed, with his
skinny little muscles
barely standing out.

He doesn't know this man
with the big box camera.
Why, he might be a
challenger for my affections!
Eugene need not worry--I have
my sights set even higher.

I'm looking to get away
from Manchester.
Away from mill rats
and men, both inside
and out, who want
to capture my soul.

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Fellow librarian, Jone, will be hosting this week's Round-Up at Check It Out. (Jone is also the person to whom I'm sending my first poem in this year's Summer Poem Swap, organized by the lovely Tabatha Yeatts! I'm planning to collect all my Summer Swap Poems and posting them together on August 15.)

Haiku Sticky #258

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.